In October 2013 evidence was collated that disputed – indeed disproved – Professor Sir Simon Wessely’s long-held belief that disorders including ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, Gulf War Syndrome and interstitial cystitis are but different parts of the same “elephant”, the “elephant” being a functional somatic disorder: “Many of these syndromes are dignified by their own case definition and body of research….We question this orthodoxy and ask whether these syndromes represent specific diagnostic entities, or are they rather more like the elephant to the blind man – simply different parts of a larger animal?” (Lancet 1999:354:936-939). The article also provided evidence that Wessely was equally wrong about the Camelford drinking water catastrophe (Professor Sir Simon Wessely -- Right or Wrong? http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/Right-or-Wrong.htm ).

Whilst some internet commentators question the benefit of re-visiting the past and wish only to move onwards, others hold the view that dismissal of the damage done to sick people by the wrongful ascription of a mental health label to a physical disorder hinders proper understanding and prevents similar damage from being repeated in the future, since nothing constructive has been learned from the unnecessary iatrogenic suffering and no-one has been held accountable for it.

With this in mind and with the emergence of further autopsy evidence, it is timely to reconsider the enormity of the wrong perpetrated by Wessely upon the people of Camelford (a small town in Cornwall), since the whole issue has once again surfaced and deserves global attention.

It will be recalled that in July 1988 residents of Camelford were poisoned when 20 tonnes of aluminium sulphate were accidentally pumped into their drinking water supply; seven people died; 25,000 suffered serious health effects and 40,000 animals were affected (Dr Douglas Cross: The Ecologist:1990:20:6:228-233).

In 1995, Wessely and his co-psychiatrist Anthony David wrote an editorial in The Journal of Psychosomatic Research entitled “The Legend of Camelford: Medical Consequences of a Water Pollution Accident” in which they said: “Further health monitoring of the population at risk was considered…unnecessary…since the results would ‘be heavily influenced by people’s fears of long term effects’ ” and they noted that symptoms being reported “were put down to anxiety”. David and Wessely commented that: “Psychological ‘damage’ can lead to successful compensation claims (and) it was clear that at Camelford a physical attribution was required by sufferers”. They concluded: “We suggest that the most likely explanation of the Camelford findings is that the perception of normal and benign somatic symptoms (physical and mental) by both subjects and health professionals was heightened and subsequently attributed to an external, physical cause such as poisoning….It is probable that among those afflicted are a few individuals with pre-existing somatisation or abridged somatisation disorders…which were then diverted to fall in line with the prevailing complaints of the affected population….Future investigations of environmental incidents should recall that social and cultural factors are as important as medical ones”.

That same year the BMJ published a “re-assessment” of Wessely’s conclusions (Still waters. 5th August 1995:311:395); it found that “mass hysteria was largely responsible for the furore”.

Trump sets out the evidence that dead villagers have been found to have had high levels of aluminium in their brain, suffering early onset dementia and a relatively early death.

As Trump says: “It was the worst case of mass poisoning in British history. The effects were noticed within 90 minutes and included diarrhoea and vomiting, severe joint aches, and blistering. Hands and lips stuck together. Hair turned green, fingernails blue”.

Trump exposes yet more aluminium-linked deaths than were previously known about and sets out factual evidence obtained at autopsy by Christopher Exley, Professor in Bioinorganic Chemistry at Keele University, who found abnormally high levels of aluminium per gram of dry tissue in samples from Camelford residents.

Professor Exley noted that a finding of more than one microgram of aluminium per gram of dry tissue was “a little unusual”, and that samples from deceased Camelford residents were significantly high, with one such sample being more than 94 micrograms per gram of dry tissue.

At the time, scientists found levels of aluminium in the drinking water of Camelford to be between 500 and 3,000 times the maximum judged acceptable under EU law.

In his article, Trump considers numerous cases who were affected, including the case of one of the deceased who had undergone tests, scans and biopsies while still alive which showed high levels of aluminium in his blood and bones and which caused the protein plaque deposits that led to his early death from dementia. The man developed epilepsy and long before the onset of dementia, he suffered constant memory loss, kidney problems, skin complaints, gum disease, ear infections and brittle bones. The blood flow in his brain was also restricted.

As Trump makes clear, in 1988 the privatisation of the water industry was looming and Camelford was a major embarrassment. In 2001 the then Environment Minister, Michael Meacher, said that the issue had “become a tug of war between the truth and an attempt to silence the truth”.

Wessely’s part in the dismissal of such devastating suffering as mere “perception” and his confident assertions that there was no evidence of long-term adverse effects on health as a consequence of the drinking water contamination should not be under-estimated when considering the Camelford catastrophe.

The Wikipedia article is quite a good read, I hadn't realized just how shocking the cover up was, for 16 days after the massive contamination (which killed 60,000 river fish when it was flushed out of the pipes) the authorities insisted the water was safe and should be mixed with orange juice to disguise the taste.

Yes maybe Wessley will be hauled over the coals for this - I don't care what he's disgraced for as long as he pays for something. This man has killed people because of his pseudo science. And as for the BMJ well we all know what they stand for - Biggest mountain of junk.

Well its been written by a journalist from the Daily Mail so lets see if the other papers take it up or stay quiet as they have done so far in order to protect this man. I hope the villagers from Camelford see it through to the end, get justice and W pays for his role in it all.

There is a pattern of behaviour to Wessely's actions: covering crap up for the befit of government and industry

Whether it is intentional, or whether it is because he's such a misguided, blinkered damn fool is something we don't know, but, it's FAR too frequent and prolonged to be anything "normal".
Anyone can screw up, and apologize unreservedly. He has not, he thus perpetuates monstrously criminal abuse of MILLIONS of patients
ME, Gulf War Syndrome, Camelford, and many others.
once is an accident, twice a coincidence, but three times it's bloody deliberate.

As I've spoken of, the UK's "system" is a sick monstrosity that needs rooted out, burned out, it's crimes monstrous beyond belief, a Stygian pit of perversion, cronyism and connivance.
I hold little hope that Wessely will be brought to trial like he should be until he's so old he won't face prosecution...as has happened with so many criminals governments were in bed with.

But, his crap is part of the huge web of lies and ghastly stupid waste, that is likely to destroy our civilization, maybe our species

Today on the BBC, article on possible link between lead in petrol, and crime rate
It was know by the Romans that lead had serious effects on people, our governments bloody KNEW tetraethyl lead harmed people, but they didn't give a crap, because they were all in bed with the oil companies, or were way down the road of "the road to hell is paved with good intentions", the ends justify the means, "industry and commerce must advance! can't make omelette's without breaking eggs!"
Inhumane hubris and FOLLY, wrong! We lost much more than we gained.

Also,the fumes mostly affected folk in dense urban areas, i.e. "plebs" like me. On average, the IQ of kids leaving near our roads was -10 less than normal! So, the Well off avoided that plague.
Crime rates soar, so they blame it on the poor for being "thug brutes", scream about "back to basics", "Moral majority" "war on drugs"!
and the fault's really about pollution caused by power and profit (Soviet's did it to, see parts of Czechoslovakia, but we have no excuse we were supposed to be Democracies, our leaders DID know better).

ugh that hubris, that wilful inhumanity and STUPIDITY has caused so MANY harms, the synergy of them all is a doomsday tapestry

Cancer is sky rocketing as are autoimmune diseases, well the answer's obvious and it's NOT because "poor folk are fat"

pesticides made from chemicals so deadly they are used as nerve gas, and we spray our food with it...and folk similar to Wessely claimed for decades it was all safe, and anyone complaining about it was "putting poor children at risk of famine!"
BULLSHIT! they were ingesting some of the most potent carciongens and mutagens ever know, and they have terrible effects on the nervous and endocrine system
And organophosphate poisoning is linked to M.E. and Gulf War Syndrome.

Our world is bathed in invisible dust and gas from nuclear bomb tests and the insane system usd to make plutonium for them, supposed "clean safe civilian nuclear energy" ah BOLLOCKS!
Lunatic swine pumped so much uranium, technetium and tritium into the Irish Sea farmers can't bloody use seaweed for fertilizer, yet it's officially "safe to eat fish and bathe", yeah you see many "Lord Muck a muck Mr Oxbridge fancy pants" bathing around our shores?

added to the millions of tons of munitions dumped in Beaufort's Dyke, including poison gasses from both World Wars, and stuff that was so heinous the IMBECILES destroyed the records of it and marked the crates with red crosses so who knows what the hell it is?
Oh and the Skagerrak and other places had German nerve gas dumped in them after WW2.

I could go on with a long list but my town is a prime example, as folk may know, death rates in Western Scotland are horrendous, with folk from poor areas dying 30 years earlier than those in more affluent parts.
There's a video online of our local MP claiming he "never knew of any cancer clusters" well he must be the most uninformed berk ever, because everyone and their brother knew of it, and knew of families wiped out etc
oh and last laugh is on that politician, he worked in the steelwork, so his polluted genes are likely to cause harm to his offspring for generations, so what price selling out for massive land development when you are screwed, hoist by yer own petard!?

So, all over the world, many things covered up, done for profit, done because "the ends justify the means" to assholes, are intertwining, and causing mayhem
Wessely's one of the folk responsible for allowing this to happen.

I love the phrase "doomsday tapestry". A lot of people looking into this think of centralized conspiracy, a tree, with a top dog calling the shots, causing lesser dogs to fall in line. Yet I think the best way to think of these things is a complex web, a bowl of spaghetti, or a vast net that is more holes than substance. Its a tangled mess of business as usual, where business has very narrow concerns because every other concern is someone else's responsibility. Yet they have to live on the same planet, and this view multiplied millions of times is global catastrophe unfolding. Its always someone else's problem until it becomes their own.

The old adage of;
"Never attribute to conspiracy that which can be achieved by incompetence."

But these is a conspiracy you know, there really is when it comes to what this creature has done.
A very public apology and handing back his gong are the very least that is required, before compensation to his victims.

Is this the work of another Wessley or did he at least once see objective signs in ME/CFS patients? Why then not ask why these patients do have vitamin B deficiencies? Very few patients in the study though.

That was published in '99 - but it doesn't seem to be overridingly important in his normal body of "literature of recursive citations"!
In fact, I'm sure Dr.Shepherd told me, just recently, that there is nothing in the literature to support recommending B12.

That was published in '99 - but it doesn't seem to be overridingly important in his normal body of "literature of recursive citations"!
In fact, I'm sure Dr.Shepherd told me, just recently, that there is nothing in the literature to support recommending B12.

Is this the work of another Wessley or did he at least once see objective signs in ME/CFS patients? Why then not ask why these patients do have vitamin B deficiencies? Very few patients in the study though.

He's listed last of the authors (the others aren't psychs) so probably had very little involvement in the study or the paper. Often the real biomedical researchers who don't know any better will get an "expert" on board just for background info and such.

The papers on which he is sole author will reflect his beliefs the most directly, followed by research on which he is the principal author. His views are pretty clear in those.

I love the phrase "doomsday tapestry". A lot of people looking into this think of centralized conspiracy, a tree, with a top dog calling the shots, causing lesser dogs to fall in line. Yet I think the best way to think of these things is a complex web, a bowl of spaghetti, or a vast net that is more holes than substance. Its a tangled mess of business as usual, where business has very narrow concerns because every other concern is someone else's responsibility. Yet they have to live on the same planet, and this view multiplied millions of times is global catastrophe unfolding. Its always someone else's problem until it becomes their own.

Click to expand...

Yup! "Catch 22" (the madness of bureaucracy and suicidal business moral equivalence Yossarian sees) in action on a global scale

and as I've often said, folk simply cannot grasp the mind boggling complexity or threat of so many synergies in a biosphere, or in case of some "experts" they do not WANT to know as they are happy being "High Priest of Their Bailiwick, Screw The Rest of It!"

the complexity is such that something like the Large Hadron Collider is child's play by comparison.
And the lethality, ye gods.
and multiple crazy combinations of Humans, dynastic banking families, corrupt politicians, ideologies, religion, nationality, you name it making many many competing interests determined to have their way at ANY cost.
ugh!
I am a Vulcan, screw you Humans!
Seriously does my head in

Simple scenario: Global Warming, tsunamis and rubbish dumpings have already caused enormous multi million ton garbage fields in the deep ocean gyres.
on these floating garbage islands, bacterial mats will grow and as ocean temperatures increase, these bacterial mats will poison the waters and suck out the oxygen, destroying fish stocks and possibly adding to climate change
Worst case is total oceanic anoxia and end of the Human Race.

Autoimmune scenario: so many synergies intertwine, that all kinds of health problems run rampant, what is the damn use of striving to stop measles, if that attitude plus many others at same time, results in soaring cancer autism and other rates?
Wakefield may be right or wrong, none of us can know for sure because too much power and money will damn well make sure the truth is hidden
but every vaccination is the same as a puncture wound infecting you and that's not the normal way infections are fought, evidence suggests immune response are very complex, and are related to how/where the infection starts
we are using a sledgehammer to crack a nut! Add in potential contamination of vaccines and other issues.
as time goes on, more diseases will affect us, that's a given, so how many vaccines will we be forced to take one day? 50? 100? more?
each time risking all kinds of problems.
and what the MORONS have completely overlooked, is the epigenetic effect of vaccinating folk for over a century, sometimes generations receiving shots with the exact same strain...think about it, it's sensitizing entire populations!

I DO NOT KNOW
the one truth every true responsible person should be willing to admit and to act very cautiously indeed with things such as Public health and hey I'm no selfish git, I'm very pro Public health...but with accepting issues and caution.First, do no harm.
it is the certainty of assholes and scumbags that keeps screwing us up "the ends justify the means" is the "road to hell is paved with good intentions".

"I DO NOT KNOW" is something that I aim to address in my book. Its called Embracing Uncertainty for a reason. We need to question more and be certain less. That does not mean we do not act on what we think we know, it means we are ready to change position as the facts or our understanding changes. It means the things we think we know are subject to constant review. Sadly this is antithetical to hierarchical ossified power structures.